Chapter 1122 — Three Days

CHAPTER 1122

Three Days

The crack was at the edge of his inner heaven, on the side where the swallowed pieces had gone in.

Shi Feng found it that first night, sitting cross-legged in the abode’s heart with his back against the cold stone. It was small, running about a finger’s length along the rim. Through it, his new sky leaked a thin thread of qi out into his body and away into the air.

If he left it, it would widen. If it widened, his heaven would collapse, and he would fall back to peak Shattering Void with a hole in him where a heaven had been. Shi Feng was afraid of that.

Shi Feng chose to mend it before he did anything else.

“How long?” Lin Langtian asked from the furnace.

“Three days,” Shi Feng said, without opening his eyes. “If nobody knocks.”

“Nobody will knock,” Lin Langtian said, feeding another split pine log into the furnace mouth. “Senior Brother has put the old man on the door, and the old man has put on his door face. Even the snow’s afraid to fall on him.”

At the valley mouth, three hundred paces away, Qin Wuyan stood watch in silence.

Shi Feng worked the crack shut slowly. Forcing it would tear the rim further, so he drew the edges together with his own qi, held them, and let the heaven grow new ground across the gap. The grey light from the swallowed pieces helped. It was his now, and it went where he sent it.

On the first day the crack stopped leaking.

On the second day it was half closed, and Lin Langtian brought him congee he hadn’t asked for. The bowl shook a little in Lin Langtian’s hand, so Shi Feng took it before it could spill.

“The cold,” Lin Langtian said.

“It’s the cold,” Shi Feng agreed, drinking the congee. He knew it wasn’t, but he wouldn’t shame Lin Langtian by saying so.

Lin Langtian sat down on the stone beside him and watched him for a while. Lin Langtian rarely sat quietly, so Shi Feng waited.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said at last, and he wasn’t smiling. “Heavens don’t eat heavens. I’ve seen a great many of them. I’ve broken a few. I’ve never seen one eat another.”

“Mine had a gap where the pieces went in,” Shi Feng said, setting the bowl down. “Now it’s closing.”

“That isn’t an answer,” Lin Langtian said.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “I don’t understand it well enough to explain, and I don’t want anyone else hearing about it.”

Lin Langtian looked at him a moment longer. Then he laughed and slapped his own knee.

“Good! Good. A man who tells everyone what’s inside his heaven deserves to have it robbed,” Lin Langtian said, getting up. “Keep it shut, then. Senior Brother will pretend he didn’t see anything. Yours Truly is very good at forgetting.”

He went back to the furnace. Lin Langtian kept it warm for three days and nights and never let it go out, though Shi Feng never asked him to. Shi Feng was grateful.

On the third morning the crack closed.

Shi Feng opened his eyes and breathed out, relieved. His inner heaven was whole. It was a little larger than before, because of what it had taken in, and quieter. He checked it once and turned his attention outward.

His left arm had come back to its proper colour, though it still wouldn’t lift above his shoulder. His ribs hurt when he breathed in, but they would heal.

Qin Wuyan came up from the valley mouth at noon. He stood just inside the door, the way he always did.

“The report went south by Pavilion seal on the first night,” Qin Wuyan said. “To the Hanyuan tower, and from there to Old Tower Master Dai. This one wrote what happened. All of it.”

“All of it?” Shi Feng asked.

“That the 6 Mark held off a mid Profound Heaven Elder of the bandits and took his arm,” Qin Wuyan said, pausing. “That his art was his own. This one did not write what this one did not understand.”

“Thank you, Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said gratefully. “That’s all the Pavilion needs to know.”

Qin Wuyan bowed and said nothing more.

The herb boy from Pinefall came up the valley path that afternoon with a basket of roots on his back and the whole town’s gossip. Lin Langtian had paid him a copper a trip since the eight clouds, and the boy liked to talk.

“The magistrate wrote it up as bandits again,” the herb boy said, putting the basket down. “Bandits came up the valley and the old man from the Pavilion chased them off. That’s what the board says.”

“And what does the town say?” Lin Langtian asked, handing him a sweet potato.

“The town says bandits, too,” the herb boy said, taking a bite. “But the town also says a young man up here made the sky look away. Uncle Fu at the tea stall saw the clouds go up and come apart, and he swears on his mother’s grave the sky looked down at the valley and then pretended it hadn’t. He says it twice a day now. Nobody believes him. Everyone listens anyway.”

“Tell Uncle Fu that Senior Brother says he’s right,” Lin Langtian said gravely. “Twice a day isn’t enough. He should say it three times.”

The herb boy took his copper and ran back down the path. Shi Feng watched him go.

Pinefall was a small town. If its tea stall was already talking about the sky, the Hanyuan teahouses would be too. Every house in the north that had ever sent the Pavilion a commission letter would be counting days. Shi Feng knew the quiet wouldn’t last.

At the valley mouth the array’s outer ring sounded once, softly.

Qin Wuyan had already turned to the door.

“A rider,” Qin Wuyan said, looking down the valley. “Pavilion grey. Alone.”